Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison How many of us have given up? How many of us have wondered later if we had just tried a little longer would we have prevented failure? I am very deep in thought this week. Getting ready to make a huge commitment again. I am thinking about the holidays. I am thinking about the gifts and the giving. I am thinking about life and how it gives us gifts, but for ungrateful people one day life just quits giving. I am thinking of the people who gave up to go try with someone new or something new. People who proclaimed they were unhappy and started replacing people instead of proactively combating the true source of their unhappiness (something within themselves) I am thinking of the people who give up. Who start over to give up again. They practice failure - they practice just giving up. I started Operation Dads Love in May. I wanted to give up at least a dozen times since then. I question myself and the message or the cause. I asked if it meant anything to anyone other than me. I faced judgement and ridicule at times. I faced heartbreak and intense internal battles. I, at times, had people remind me not to give up. I, at times, felt like no one cared but me and I had to remind myself not to give up. I dont know....... in many aspects of my life I feel far from success. I know one thing for sure.... If I am committed to a life of giving up, I am committed to a life of failure. If I have pre-determined giving up - I have pre-destined the failure of that thing; everything from a relationship with a significant other, a sibling, a little girl that is counting on me if nothing else to not give up because I am her daddy... I meet people all the time, every single day, who go into a relationship with a predetermined outcome of failure. No matter how good that relationship is, the spend the entire thing looking for reasons to give up, the force the failure. Theyve forced themselves to practice giving up before they ever find success. They force themselves to accept failure even when they dont believe it - they will at times go as far as forcing themselves not to feel anything, while they force something to failure. They practice giving up and finding excuses to let go of amazing and irreplaceable gifts from companions to children. On behalf of Operation Dads Love I would ask you to spend some time during this season of giving to enjoy some deep thought about the gifts you have in your life. I would ask you to give yourself a gift - a gift that inspires and encourages others. Give yourself the gift of not committing to giving up - not committing to failure Give the gift of success - you may feel far from it but the closer you commit yourself to giving up the further from success in any aspect of life you will push yourself. The best gift I could ever give Hannah, the bottom line and mission statement of this Organization is one simple thing.... Dont give up - commit to success - no matter how far you feel from it just dont give up. I am not a perfect man and I am not a perfect dad. I am also not allowing myself to find excuses, not in circumstances or hardships, to excuse myself for making a decision to give up. That is something that cowards do. Giving up means that no matter how long ago you quit trying - youve made a promise within yourself to never try again. I meet people daily who have made that promise to themselves so early in life whether because of something from their childhood or just society (worldwide) telling people that giving up is okay. Statements saying success is moving from one failure to another without losing momentum - which is a lie to say keep repeating the same failure over and over but maintain your pace. The problem is the reality that if you are committed to failure, and not loosing momentum, you will never even know what direction in life youre headed. You will just go around yourself in circles giving up, failing. Success - breakthrough - may be just around the bend but youll never know if you just give up That is where my heart was when I started this. I wanted to give up. At times missing Hannah so much hurt so bad and feeling so far away I felt like I was moving closer and closer to failure as a daddy with each passing day away. In a moment one night driving in my car, I internally slapped myself in the face and told myself to snap out of it, I realized that I was moving towards failure, I was giving up and telling myself I wasnt good enough or would never be good enough. I could hear myself in my own head at times start making excuses why giving up wouldnt be my fault. I realized that I wanted Hannah to have one gift, to know one simple thing, to have one assurance when it came to her Daddy.. For her, for her mommy - no matter what circumstances could ever be I wanted her to know I would never use circumstances or politics or even the past.... I would never use anything as an excuse to give up and just quit trying. I never accepted failure - but I would lie to say at times it felt like the easy way out - I never gave up no matter how far from her or from success I felt. I felt like the best way to remind myself of that promise and express it was to literally walk the walk. I decided to literally face all odds, hold myself accountable, face danger and fear and insecurity (the things that push us all to give up on anything - the things we use as excuses to give up on ourselves and each other).... That was why I wanted to walk, attempt to walk all the way from Michigan to South Carolina - a statement of what you should be willing to do before you accept failure, before you give up. You should be willing to do something no one has ever done, attempt something that is scary and death defying before you ever give up on someone who loves you, before you ever give up on yourself and your internal growth. A statement that no matter how far you feel from success you should be willing to face yourself against all odds to fight through that unknown distance daily to make it back to what matters. To make it back to your heart and soul. The walk represents the journey of dealing with ourselves no matter what has happened to us in the past from childhood to having someone break our heart in a relationship; no matter what could happen, even the same hurt pain or heartbreak again as I experienced on my trip - the thought of just giving up is not something I accept. When I started that walk someone close to me said remember, the English channel wasnt swam successfully in the first attempt and what the person meant was - pre-determine going as far as you can but dont expect to make it all the way. My response to their statement was the only reason it was ever swam successfully is because the same person returned to the same thing and never gave up - every single attempt he set out with a mindset he would make it all the way across and never gave up on that mindset - the same attempt - he never once failed because he never abandon the mindset of making it all the way and he kept trying... I keep returning to the same people I have at times failed with. I keep returning to the same challenge, same exact person, same exact scenario - I keep trying because each time I keep getting a little closer. I have only experienced success with people who likewise never gave up - people who were willing to try again with a mindset of success not failure. Those people in this modern day are so very few and far between. In todays modern mindset it is encouraged as okay to just give up if its not going how you think it should and even if you have to find or make up reasons.... it is perfectly normal to pre-determine failure as a learning experience?........ We spend too much time living in our past. Telling ourselves that is what we learn from. While there is truth to that we need to change the way we think; we need to learn from our future and our relentless efforts to never give up on the same attempt at success with the people we have today. Simply put - when you recycle people and give up on one to replace them with another, saying what you learned from people from the past will help you better with people in the future that you have yet to find, you start over from the beginning in the false pretense it will be easier with a different or new person. The false pretense that you grow each new person you fail with. If you give up on one youll give up on another. I have been hurt at times by allowing people in my life whos history proclaimed their commitment to giving up; people who their dedication was to failure, they broke my heart and shattered my soul because I believed in their expressed desire to not do that anymore. I watched them give up. I lived through their statements against me while they made excuses and reasons why; everything from saying they were too broken to saying I didnt care or listen, saying I didnt understand them when they wouldnt talk honestly and they said they wished they understood themselves. There is no such thing as the one or if it is meant to be or someone compatible.... the only way you will ever make it is if two people are determined to not give up and keep trying together not matter how many attempts it takes. You cant control someone elses decision, only your own. You can live in pain and peace. Pain realizing someone else made their decision but peace that yours was to never give up or to always return to try again. OR you can live in pain and torture - pain because you are sick of yourself doing what youre doing and torture of always trying so hard to tell yourself that what youre doing is okay, or it makes sense to you because of a circumstance from your past, or because of a requirement of your future for better grades, degrees, parental requirements or cultural boundaries - being someone for something you are not.... Dont torture yourself trying to justify pre-determining failure or making excuses for why giving up was something that wasnt about you. Stop making up reason like compatibility or meant to be or using the other person, exploiting them, as your scapegoat to avoid your decision to give up. You will be meant to be, you will be perfectly compatible and find yourself with the right person when YOU make YOUR choice to quit giving up and pre-determining failure or starting over. I have yet to meet ONE single person who is living that way, giving up, that is actually happy with who THEY are - so they tell themselves they have not found the person they are supposed to be with. They tell themselves that a new geographic location or new ..... will make them more happy and fit them better. They are right - because internally they have not come to peace with themselves in a way that they are finally okay with being with themselves - they keep giving up on themselves and they hurt so many other people as they go through this because they recycle all the people who love them out of their life. So now they are causing serious pain in someone else....... and why? Because they pre-determined themselves as a failure, they pre-determined giving up, they pre-determined learning from their failures/mistakes/past and moving on to start over and over and over.... When I talk about how we do this, how our children are affected, how things passed on from our parents end up passed on to our children... People think it is so deep and way too complex.... some ridiculous theory. Why do we pass pain, insecurity and failure? Why do we promote finding someone new if we arent happy instead of fixing ourselves as the source of our unhappiness. Why do we push each other to filtered and false presentations that make us seem something strong and stable? The show no emotions mentality that says those who show no emotion are strong because nothing gets the best of them? From an early age I knew one thing - life was not meant to be a big confusing cluster of fine lines and red tape saying that interaction with other humans was about common ground. I had one person that meant a lot to me, even in the initial founding stages of the organization, take every single thing that we had in common and exclaim it was a freaky coincidence because two people couldnt be that close. Eventually they succeeded in telling themselves that everything between us was fake. Then they gave up and promoted failure as something that was inevitable. But the simple reality is that when people give up - they fail - they avoid success because they have predetermined that it doesnt exist and in the process of giving up they hurt other people.... I dont know how to save the world. I cant save someone I love or tell them how to fix their problems. I have no warrant or merit to tell someone else how to make their decisions or how they should or shouldnt interact with others. I am immediately dismissed from peoples lives often just for sharing openly and honestly - if nothing else begging other to ask themselves some hard questions. I dont have all the answers and I have no medical credentials to justify making an evaluation of anyone elses decisions, behavior or possible illness in their mindset. I am asking you one simple question in closing of 2013... I am asking just like the year ODL was founded, 2013, if you were to rearrange your mindset would you realize that steps 0, 1 , 2, 3 have always been right in front of you regarding success, happiness or peace. Has the answer always been right next to you, inside of you when it comes to the questions that you struggle to define let alone the answers or where you will find them. Do you really have to have success in a career to find people who love you and appreciate you? Or if you keep the people around and never give up on them, never giving up on you, is success something that is inevitable? They say that people who have true genuine love, from other people, are capable of incredible things. How close are you to failure? How far are you from success? Change the order of those thoughts in your head, change the steps from 2, 0, 1, 3 go date around, get a degree, become self sufficient and then find someone that deserves me The year ODL was founded has great significance because the message is as simple as a question - a question you have to ask yourself daily - a question you have to ask yourself about yourself daily and you have to re-arrange yourself to even ask the questions.... Is 0, 1, 2, 3 actually more along the lines of how am I lying to myself about why I do what I do or what I tell myself I have to do - for who?, how am I failing myself, how am I hurting myself and most importantly - how is that hurting all those who simply love and believe in me even if I had no degree, no career, no money, nothing to offer but me - who am I hurting - like my child, friends, companions Would people, in the long scary run end up appreciating me more if I was just me, without fear, if I said that I put people first and I would not give up on them, I would not accept failure - no matter how far I feel from success. Operation Dads Love is going to close out the year asking you to think about something.... Asking you to ask yourself something.... Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison 2013 How close are you to failure? How far are you from success? 0123 How close are you to success? How far are you from failure? If you just keep giving up you will never know..... You will just keep forcing failure and you will face all these things in your life to live out your pre-determined outcome of failure. Why would you not want to face all the things in your life that would lead to success? It would be like me walking to Canada - the wrong direction - facing the same fear, insecurity, near death, to get further in the wrong direction. If you face it to move in the right direction it will make more sense, have true purpose and meaning and it will lead you closer to success if you refuse to give up. I knew what direction my heart was in. I knew the direction I had to walk to get closer to success - I knew what direction required my relentless effort of never giving up. The best gift, the one that will give to yourself and others, the one that will change YOUR life AND OTHERS..... Its as simple as not giving up. Not accepting failure. Not telling yourself what those things are in the wrong order of life - not taking a direction further away - not going in the wrong direction with such determination. Everything people do revolves around people, including commerce and career - without customers (people) we all have nothing, we all have no real purpose, and yet we tell ourselves to never depend on anyone but ourselves, not to allow ourselves to need or depend on anyone but ourselves, and we all have one simple desire in life. We want to be loved and respected, cherished and admired, we want to be irreplaceable in the lives of the ones we love..... yet we fail ourselves every single day by giving up on ourselves and telling ourselves the correct process of life involves having all those needs met only within ourselves, while pretending to be someone we are not, by people who fill those roles in our lives by loving only for who we are pretending or presenting ourselves to be in that phase or moment of our lost lives. Find yourself, fight yourself, face yourself - dont give up and dont pre-determine failing yourself, not even in a moment of excruciating pain - dont give up - dont live a lie that you can do anything without others. Dont give up. Move further from failure every single day - success may be closer than you think or realize. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and I make this transition back to the military. Dont think that means I am giving up on ODL. Weve come to far, were in too deep to turn around and give up now. The way forward is not backward. As always, happy holidays from everyone at Operation Dads Love Very Humbly and Respectfully - with a lot of unconditional love for the real you, all of you I promise to never quit trying. I promise to never give up. I promise to always keep fighting. We are moving further from failure. Jordan N. Brown - Founder and President, ODL
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 06:53:09 +0000
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